just-food presents the key metrics from company financials in bitesize format, with analyst insight and social media comment alongside graphs illustrating a business' historical performance to give you an easy-to-read digest of the numbers you need to know.

Finland-based dairy cooperative Valio said sales rose in 2017 despite a challenging environment and saw continued growth in Sweden, the Baltics, Russia and China, but noted a flat performance in its domestic market.

"The imbalance of the global markets continues, and the growth in milk production is expected to outpace the demand for dairy products," said chief executive Annikka Hurme.

However, Cerealto booked an EBITDA loss of EUR2.1m, pointing to costs from the start-up of a factory in the UK and "operational improvements" at a plant in Mexico.

In 2016, Cerealto generated EBITDA of EUR4.2m.

Simply Good Foods H1 income leaps forward

US nutritional snacking business Simply Good Foods has seen its net income increase fivefold in the 26 weeks to 24 February, on a year-on-year basis. Sales and operating income were also up.

President and CEO Joseph Scalzo said: "I'm pleased with our fiscal second-quarter results as we continued to build on our marketplace momentum, which resulted in a net sales increase of 6.9%, gross margin expansion and solid operating profit growth.

"Retail takeaway performance continues to be strong and increased 4.7% and 5.1% for the 13 and 26 weeks ended February 24, 2018. While early, fiscal third-quarter marketplace performance is off to a good start giving us confidence in our growth initiatives to create value for our shareholders."

Sodiaal, the France-based dairy cooperative, saw its sales rise in 2017 but its profits curdled on the back of a "significant" increase in the price it paid for milk.

The company said the volume of milk it collected was "stable" at 4.7bn litres but the price it paid rose to EUR342 per 1,000 litres of whole milk, up from EUR282 in 2016.

Sodiaal said it had been to able to "partially" pass on the higher price, which contributed to an improvement in sales.

Looking into 2018, Sodiaal said it would implement a "strategic transformation plan" announced in November, which will see the company seek to extract more value from its milk. The co-op will, for example, invest in production of organic infant formula.

For the year to 31 December:

- Sales of EUR5.1bn (US$6.28bn), versus EUR4.8bn

- Net profit of EUR16.7m, against EUR24m in 2016

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